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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (73922)	5/5/2011 1:25:04 AM
From: TobagoJack	4 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 218645

just in in-tray Sent: Thursday, 5 May 2011 10:55 AM Subject: Forest fires Forest fires are judged to be nasty, especially when one's own house or life is threatened, or when grave harm is being done to tourist attractions. The popular conviction that fires are an unqualified evil reached its zenith after a third of Yellowstone Park in the US was destroyed by fire in 1988. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom among forest managers remains that it is best to let natural forest fires burn themselves out, unless particularly dangerous conditions apply. Burning appears to be part of a natural process of forest rejuvenation. Moreover, intermittent fires burn away the undergrowth that might accumulate and make any eventual fire uncontrollable .......Perhaps modern macroeconomists could learn from the forest managers. ~ former BIS chief economist William White

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (73922)	5/5/2011 6:22:48 AM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218645

Market-manipulation mutterings intensify Gold bug Russell adds voice to idea of Wall Street-Washington plotStory marketwatch.com Recently, I noted that longtime gold bug Richard Russell of Dow Theory Letters finally converted to the thesis that gold’s price is subject to manipulation by a Wall Street-Washington alliance. See April 25 column on Russell and the gold-manipulation thesis. Russell seems to be brooding about this insight. In reply to a correspondent who asked about the possibility of an FDR-type confiscation of gold he said the following: “I’ve thought about this at length, and I’ve arrived at what I believe to be the correct answer. The answer is — No, the government will definitely not call in the gold. The simple reason is that a tremendous amount of gold is held in very powerful hands. [The] SPDR Gold Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13!gld/quotes/nls/gld GLD -1.43% and gold bullion [are] held by pension funds, university endowment funds, large powerful hedge funds, corporate reserves and state treasuries.” This strikes me as an odd answer. Were the people who owned gold in 1933 really less so much powerful? But it’s indicative of Russell’s current thinking. This idea of manipulation seems to be spreading beyond the lunatic fringe where many investment letters dwell (often profitably). Thus the respected institutional service The Gartman Letter wrote early Wednesday morning: “Here in the U.S., we have seen example of ‘tape painting’ before where the market’s important indexes have hardly moved but where the broader markets have weakened materially, but yesterday’s action was the ‘painty-iest’ [sic] of all. The Dow finished the day essentially unchanged, but the advance-decline line was horrid. The Nasdaq /quotes/comstock/10y!i:comp COMP -0.47% was weak; the S&P /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x SPX -0.69% finished five points lower. The public heard the national news last night, which tends to report the Dow, and [concluded] things were steady. They were not. [They] were weak, and they are weakening again this morning.” (In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed DJIA -0.66% finished Wednesday down 84 points amid general dismay.) Dennis Slothower of Stealth Stocks Daily Alert has always been shockingly explicit about manipulation in the markets. See Nov. 1, 2010, column that mentions Dennis Slothower. /quotes/comstock/13!slv/quotes/nls/slv SLV 38.27, -2.31, -5.69% The iShares Silver Trust ETF50403020FMAM On Wednesday night Slothower wrote: “The iShares Silver Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13!slv/quotes/nls/slv SLV -5.69% fell another $2.31 today. I can’t stress enough how investors were set up here ... Remember what the media present as the most obvious thing to do is really what J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. /quotes/comstock/13!jpm/quotes/nls/jpm JPM -0.91% and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. /quotes/comstock/13!gs/quotes/nls/gs GS -0.23% want you, the public, to do. And last month, crushing the dollar and forcing investors to buy gold and silver at the top of the market gave the primary dealers plenty of liquidity to sell their gold and silver positions into the top of the cycle.” Slothower’s cynicism extends to commodities: “Crude oil is starting to look very toppy. The economy is beginning to break here and crude oil is beginning to look ready to roll over as energy speculators will dump this bubble and hunt for another one. “The Fed has played out its hand with this quantitative-easing program and is about to bring the economy to ruin again. We have a government that believes it is their right to pillage and plunder us. The name of the game is delusion (false economy), diversion (OBL) and the division (or plunder) of your wealth. “If you are holding gold, or any investment for that matter, you now need to have an exit strategy, should that day come. I will repeat that: YOU NEED TO HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGY! “I think investors need to be prepared that the next couple of quarters are going to see a repeat of what happened in 2008, which will cause huge asset-allocation shifts. “Frankly, I don’t think this bull market has much longer to live.” That’s really alarming. Slothower has been arguably too cautious recently, but he was one of the handful of advisers who dodged the Crash of 2008. Slothower’s bottom line: “We are 10% invested (short position in InterOil Corporation /quotes/comstock/13!ioc/quotes/nls/ioc IOC -4.99% ) and 90% cash/money markets.”